One man climbed Cowles Mountain 32 times to replicate Mount Everest
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Victory lap, literally. Photo: Courtesy of Louka Dlagnekov
Louka Dlagnekov doesn't have what you'd call a conventional idea of fun. In December, he climbed Cowles Mountain 32 times in a row in just under 24 hours.
The big mountain picture: Dlagnekov was "Everesting," a viral challenge for a certain kind of people who want to trek the total elevation of Mount Everest, but on a peak closer to home.
By the numbers: Everest is just over 29,000 feet tall, and Cowles has an elevation gain of 912 feet.
- That's 31.8 laps, but he rounded up, covering just over 92 miles.
- It took him 22 hours of moving time and just under two hours of "talking to friends, socializing and eating," he tells Axios.
Dlagnekov lives near Mission Trails and runs on Cowles all the time, so he chose the mountain to "Everest" for convenience and to celebrate Cowles' 50th anniversary.
Friction point: Nighttime was the hardest, especially because Dlagnekov did it on one of the shortest days of the year.
- "Just the incessant darkness, hardly anything was stirring," he says. "During the daytime, you pass people, they say hi and you see their smiles. At night is just a whole lot of nothing."
- His last lap was his second fastest of the journey.
State of play: In a non-Everest-related challenge, Dlagnekov covered every inch of Mission Trails in one go, an 85-mile course that took him 22 hours.
- "That was much more stressful because of the whole route-finding aspect," he says. "I'd be following the route on my watch, and I'd get to an intersection, and it wouldn't be clear: Am I supposed to go left here, am I supposed to go straight? And no one could help me because I was the only person with the route."
On summiting the real Everest: "I mean, it's something we all think about, right?" Dlagnekov says.
- No, man. Most of us don't think about climbing Everest.
- For now, he's planning to keep his climbing closer to home.